I sit here with numb eyes, having missed the moment of poetry.
What is there left to say that I have not run through in rampant thought already,
What is there left to cry that I have not yet wet my cheeks with today?
I have missed all the cutting words wrenched bloody from my wounds
And am left with nothing but numb eyes and a vague, dry sense of loss.
Perhaps it is just that I am too scared to relive it,
Having already collected myself and being now unwilling to unravel once again,
And perhaps is it because I have collected myself into a knotted mass tangled in on myself,
And to unwind would mean to find an end lost somewhere in the layered madness.
But I can tell you things that happened in no particular order,
Tug loose threads of that monstrous knot and let you see only a hint of its gut
And not the terrible pain that crouches in agonizing wait within.
Today I walked out of class with the intent of locating the bathroom,
Located it, promptly scorned it, wandered at once frantic and drifting through the halls,
Found myself in the locker bay, pressed myself to a corner,
Sunk into the wall until someone entered, slunk out the doorway before I risked discovery,
Made my escape into a deserted stretch of the Arts Department,
Did not so much sit down as lose the willpower to stand any longer, and cried.
Oh, would that these walls would soak up gasping breaths,
Muffle pusling, choked despair and ragged weeping, but alas!
Plaster and an empty hall are a sorry excuse for a secret-keeper,
Echoing my helpless sobs around me and constructing of themselves an unbearable prison,
Lit up in neon, it seemed to me, to the ears of any passers by.
At last, clear out of sanity and tissues, I was forced to return to class.
But after, I returned to my restless winding, and a straining, miserable tune
That wailed through my mind led me to the piano's keys.
But how open is that once-safe Grand, turned as my back may be to the world,
And how sick I was after storming through crowds of concered onlookers
Until I had at last perfected enough of a glower to avoid are-you-okays.
I barred myself instead in a little room downstairs and I forced from that piano
The abused melody loping through my mind, and I played until I could do no longer, and then I gave in.
I hunched over the keys and let my body, at last in solitude, convulse in bawling hatefulness,
Hating you for how easily you slipped through my fingers,
And hating myself for hating you, and hating the world for having the audacity to witness it all.
I was informed later how good at hiding I am, that no one could find me were I sought refuge,
But how good at hiding can I be to have broken down in such a manner?
And here there are too many words to say to form into any excuse for prose,
For here would be all the words I have already ranted, and bitten back, and ranted some more.
So now I sit here with numb eyes, having missed the moment of poetry,
And weakly scratching at an itch where it once might have been.
